By Bob Fick, The Associated Press
CALDWELL, Idaho (AP) - It was just another Monday for Maria Salenes until there was a thump on the door of her modest home across from the park on the city’s northwest side.
“I opened my door, and the man fell into my house,” Salenes said Thursday as she recalled the experience. “He was breathing real hard. He tried to tell me something, but it was his throat. He couldn’t talk at all. It was scary.”
The midday drive-by murder Monday of Sigmund Goode only punctuated the rising tension in the heavily Hispanic neighborhood, where gang violence is escalating.
“This is the worst I’ve seen it,” said Juan Toledo, who has lived just a block away for over for 30 years. “I didn’t hear that gunshot, but I’ve heard shots on the corner.”
The shooting of the 21-year-old Goode was the fourth in a week in the area of working class homes and tree-lined streets where many people still go home for lunch. Two other men were wounded in the recent rash of shootings, and no one was injured in the other.
But there has also been a string of burglaries recently that has served to intensify the fear.
It prompted Police Chief Bob Sobba to call this fall one of the city’s worst for violence, and the department, aided by cash from a $121,000 safe neighborhoods grant, has beefed up patrols in the city of 31,000 about 25 miles west of Boise in the heart of agriculturally rich Canyon County.
The area has a long history of Hispanic farmworkers migrating annually to work summer crops but has since seen many of the families settle there. Gang activity, involving both young Hispanics and whites, has grown with the population.
“The police are doing an awesome job,” said Joel Bettencourt, who runs the Azteca Market about six blocks from this week’s fatal shooting.
“But you can have as many cop cars on the street as you like, and if the cops aren’t there at the moment, they can’t stop it,” said Bettencourt, who has been in the neighborhood for 12 years.
Police Lt. Frank Wyant said the department’s efforts have been hindered because many of the witnesses and victims have declined to cooperate.
“We know who the active gang members are and the repeat offenders,” Wyant told the Idaho Press-Tribune. “But the problem is catching them in the act.”
It has gotten bad enough that Toledo said his wife has begun locking the doors to their house - something they had never done until now.
“You think something’s going to happen,” he said. “We’re afraid. People are afraid.”
Bettencourt said the violence seems to come in three- to five-year cycles and that this one will subside just as the others have in the past.
The gang problem pales in comparison to those in cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, he said, but he conceded that the confrontations in Caldwell are becoming more violent and may be unhinging a community where “all the people here work hard. They’re honest and respected.”
Salenes, the 37-year-old mother of four, and others are not as optimistic the violence can be checked.
“It’s going to get worse. They’re going to take revenge,” Salenes said. “I don’t know what to do any more. I want to move from here, but I don’t know that it’s any better anywhere else.”
Bettencourt said the situation is frustrating for parents, who cannot find a way to make their neighborhood safer.
“Our children are out there on the streets,” he said. “There’s a lot of innocents out there.”
Amanda Ortivez, 20, has spent her entire life in her home just a block from the site of Monday’s shooting. She was holding her 7-month-old daughter in the doorway on Thursday, when she admitted she doesn’t go out much now.
“It’s scary because it’s getting closer,” she said. “But I’m not going to run from it. I guess I’m just used to it.”